Kristin Perry, et al v. Arnold Schwarzenegger, et al

Filing
341

Filed (ECF) Appellee City and County of San Francisco response opposing motion (,motion for miscellaneous relief (to be used only if no other relief applies)). Date of service: 04/15/2011. [7719511] (CV)

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
KRISTIN M. PERRY, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN
FRANCISCO,
No. 10-16696
U.S. District Court
Case No. 09-cv-02292 JW
Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellee,
vs.
EDMUND G. BROWN JR., et al.,
Defendants,
DENNIS HOLLINGSWORTH, et al.
Defendants-Intervenors-Appellants.
PLAINTIFF-INTERVENOR-APPELLEE
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO'S
OPPOSITION TO MOTION FOR ORDER
COMPELLING RETURN OF TRIAL RECORDINGS
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
The Honorable Chief District Judge James Ware
DENNIS J. HERRERA, State Bar #139669
City Attorney
THERESE M. STEWART, State Bar #104930
Chief Deputy City Attorney
CHRISTINE VAN AKEN, State Bar #241755
MOLLIE M. LEE, State Bar #251404
Deputy City Attorneys
City Hall, Room 234
One Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, California 94102-4682
Telephone: (415) 554-4708
Attorneys for Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellee
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO
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Proponents' motion asks this Court to order the return and sealing of
digitized video recordings of a civil rights trial that is a matter of tremendous
current interest. They seek to compel Judge Walker to return a portion of his
personal judicial records, contending that his use of a snippet of the video in
connection with an academic presentation violated court rules and orders. That is
not accurate, for the reasons set forth in Plaintiffs' opposition to Proponents'
motion, which San Francisco joins. But even if Proponents' contentions were
correct, they overreach. Not only do they ask for an order requiring Judge Walker
to return his copy of the video recording, they seek to compel Plaintiffs and San
Francisco to return the copies provided to them for use in connection with the case,
while the case is still pending, without any basis. Certainly there is no reason to
believe Plaintiffs or San Francisco have violated or will violate the protective order
subject to which the video recording was made available to them, and that portion
of their motion should be denied as baseless.
In the end, Proponents' motion raises the larger issue of whether the trial
video—the best, most accurate record of a trial of significant public importance—
should be kept secret at all. No party currently seeks to use the video footage and
thus this Court may wish to reserve this question for a later day, and indeed leave
it to the district court to determine in the first instance, but in the meanwhile no
credence should be given to Proponents' continuing narrative in this case and
beyond: the myth that they, rather than gay men and lesbians whose equal
citizenship they have continued to deny, are the victims here; that they or their
witnesses are at risk of persecution or harassment because of their speech or
religious beliefs. There is simply no reason to believe that the release of the trial
video poses any risk to Proponents or their witnesses—particularly when, as
discussed below, all of the information captured in the video is already public.
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And any such risk is negligible compared to the harm to the public interest from
keeping the trial video secret.
I.
PROPONENTS CANNOT SHOW THAT RELEASE OF THE TRIAL
VIDEOS WOULD HARM THEM OR ANYONE.
In this and other cases, Proponents have repeatedly asserted, with negligible
supporting evidence, that there was terrible harassment and intimidation during the
campaign directed at those who supported Prop 8. Indeed, Proponents sought to
cloak their campaign messaging in secrecy by claiming, among other things, that
making it public would "chill" their previously associational rights by exposing
them to criticism and worse. See, e.g., Doc. 187 (Defendants-Intervenors' Motion
for Protective Order).1
When the hearsay and secondhand accounts in Proponents' supporting
evidence is set aside, however, their evidence amounts to little more than the hurlyburly of a hard-fought political campaign—one in which opponents of Prop 8 were
also subject to intimidation and abuse. See, e.g., Trial Transcript 1219-21
(testimony of Helen Zia) ("And when we would be out there on the streets . . .
handing out fliers people would just come up to us and say, you know, `you dike.'
And excuse my language, Your Honor, but `You fucking dike.' Or `You're going
to die and burn in hell. You're an abomination.'" "I also felt endangered . . ."))
Moreover, Proponents' own conduct belies any assertion that secrecy about
the Prop 8 campaign is necessary to protect them. Proponents have voluntarily and
repeatedly injected themselves and their views into the public sphere. They did so
first by becoming official proponents of Proposition 8. They willingly spoke out in
very public ways to advocate the enactment of a law that would govern the entire
State and made no attempt to hide their identities or their views at that time. Even
1
Docket number references are to the District Court's ECF docket.
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Proponents' ugliest messaging that was the most openly hostile toward gay people
was made available during the campaign on the internet and, indeed, continued to
be available long afterward.2 After Proponents succeeded in getting Prop 8
enacted into law, Proponents' consultants bragged about their campaign strategy
and messaging in magazine articles and presentations that were available to the
public at large. SER at 350-54. And Proponents have chosen twice after
Proposition 8 was enacted to thrust themselves back into the public sphere,
intervening first in the California Supreme Court proceedings challenging
Proposition 8 as an improper amendment and subsequently in this case. And in
both of those efforts, they communicated to the public via press release and press
conference, on their internet websites and in pleadings they filed in open court
their views that treating gay men and lesbians equally poses a threat to the rest of
society. Any claim by Proponents that public discussion of their views of the
rights of gay men and lesbians places them in harm's way is squarely refuted by
their own conduct.
Even if Proponents' account that supporters of the Prop 8 campaign were at
risk of harassment could be credited, however, there is no reason whatsoever to
credit their separate assertion that the only two witnesses they called in the trial
court (who were compensated experts) or Proponents themselves are placed at risk
of harassment or abuse by the public release of trial videotapes. Not one piece of
2
Examples of exhibits that were not produced but that Plaintiffs obtained
from the internet are the videos of three simulcast events, presentations in favor of
Prop 8 held in churches and broadcast across the state during the campaign, which
it was undisputed were paid for by ProtectMarriage.com and sold on the internet
during the campaign and thereafter. See Trial Transcript 2341-42; 2358 (Ex. 506);
2360-76 & Exs. 421, 503 504, 505; see also excerpts shown in open court as Ex.
504A and transcripts admitted in evidence as Exs. 506, 1867, 1868.
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evidence has been presented to support this claim.3 This contention is all the more
absurd since, apart solely from the video recording of the trial in this case, the
record of the proceedings is already public. This includes the briefs and
declarations submitted by Proponents in opposition to the motion for preliminary
injunction and in support of their motion for summary judgment. It includes their
case management statements, discovery pleadings and motions, the majority of the
documents they produced, and the myriad documents they created that Plaintiffs
and the City were able to obtain from the internet. It includes the transcripts and
the video recordings of the depositions of Proponents, ProtectMarriage.com's
Executive Director and executive committee members, and the expert witnesses
designated by Proponents before trial. It even includes the transcripts of the trial
itself. And finally, the notes and memories of hundreds of people, including press,
who attended the court proceedings in the case, and their public tweeting and
blogging about the trial, the press coverage generated by press conferences at
which Proponents and their lawyers spoke daily during the trial and after many of
the pretrial proceedings, and the almost real-time YouTube reenactments of the
trial created from the written transcripts that were made public on a daily basis
already document every aspect of the case in a way that refutes any claimed need
for continued secrecy of the actual video recording of the trial.
3
Proponents' contentions that they withdrew expert witnesses because of
fear of intimidation due to the planned transmission of the trial video was soundly
rejected by Judge Walker, since the witnesses were withdrawn after the Supreme
Court stayed the order allowing transmission of the proceedings beyond the
confines of the District Court. Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921, 944
(N.D. Cal. 2010). The real reason Proponents' withdrew their experts was likely
because in their depositions the testimony they gave supported Plaintiffs' case and
not Defendants, see, Trial Transcript 1497-1503 (playing excerpts of depositions of
Proponents' withdrawn experts Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young), and
because their witnesses could not stand up to robust cross examination. See Trial
Transcript 2792 et seq. (cross-examination of David Blankenhorn).
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In short, even if dissemination of Proponents' views once posed a credible
threat of something other than public criticism of Proponents' views, that bridge
has long since been crossed and it was willingly crossed by Proponents themselves.
Proponents are not entitled to disseminate their views widely and vocally to
influence lawmakers and courts and then attempt retroactively to cloak their
participation in secrecy after their views have been (or failed to be) enacted into
law or upheld.
II.
THERE IS A STRONG PUBLIC INTEREST IN THE EVENTUAL
RELEASE OF THE VIDEOTAPES.
What is really at stake here is not any threat of intimidation or chilling of
First Amendment freedoms. Instead, Proponents would keep secret and sealed the
most compelling evidence about the grievous harm gay people and society suffer
from the long and continued history of unequal treatment of lesbians and gay
men—the video footage of Kristin Perry, Sandy Stier, Paul Katami, Jeffrey
Zarrillo, Ryan Kendall, Helen Zia and Jerry Sanders telling their personal stories.
They would shield from public view as well the video footage of the powerful
expert testimony proffered by Plaintiffs and the City, which thoroughly and
convincingly refuted every canard on which Proponents have relied to argue that
gay and lesbian people and relationships are different and inferior, unworthy of
recognition and threatening to children and society. Likewise, Proponents' secrecy
regime would lessen the likelihood that the public will see in living color the
contrast between this evidence and the paucity of evidence supporting Proponents'
point of view. They would prevent the public from witnessing the utter
incoherence of the sole substantive witness they proffered to the Court concerning
the institution of marriage, David Blankenhorn. And finally, they would keep
public attention from being drawn to the ugly messages they deployed during the
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campaign itself describing gay people as diseased and as pedophiles and
comparing gay relationships to bestiality. Trial Transcript 1918-22, 1925-26,
1943, 1955-56, 1971, 1917; Ex. 506 at 12. But the facts are the facts, and they are
already public. Proponents are not entitled to keep from the public eye the best
record of the historical trial that exposed the vacuity of their position. Video
footage, whether conveyed by broadcast or cable television or on the internet,
remains the most compelling medium of our time. Indeed, Proponents used it
heavily during the campaign and it was effective. The public should not be denied
the opportunity now to see the trial in its recorded state, rather than be relegated to
the dry transcripts or actors' rendition of the trial by reenactment.
As Justice Scalia observed in his concurring opinion in Doe v. Reed, 130
S.Ct. 2811, 2832 (2010) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment): "Our Nation's
longstanding traditions of legislating and voting in public refute the claim that the
First Amendment accords a right to anonymity in the performance of an act with
governmental effect." Not only has "the exercise of lawmaking power in the
United States," including the powers of initiative and referendum, "traditionally
been public" (id. at 2833-35), so have trials been open to the public, as Plaintiffs'
opposition demonstrates. Particularly in a civil trial of nationwide importance, the
public has the strongest constitutional interest in observing it. Allowing them to
see it will enhance their understanding of and respect for the judicial process and
for constitutional democracy. It will demonstrate the legitimacy of a decision in
favor of Plaintiffs, and if the Court rules against Plaintiffs and holds that the
Constitution leaves this issue to the People, it will inform their own selfgovernance. And if making the video accessible to the public does subject those
on either side of the debate to additional criticism, that is the price we pay for
democracy. Doe, supra, 130 S.Ct. at 283 (2010) (Scalia, J., concurring in
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judgment) ("harsh criticism, short of unlawful action, is a price our people have
traditionally been willing to pay for self-governance. Requiring people to stand up
in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is
doomed.").
Dated:
April 15, 2011
Respectfully submitted,
DENNIS J. HERRERA
City Attorney
THERESE M. STEWART,
Chief Deputy City Attorney
CHRISTINE VAN AKEN
MOLLIE M. LEE
Deputy City Attorneys
By: s/Therese M. Stewart
THERESE M. STEWART
Chief Deputy City Attorney
Attorneys for Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellee
CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO
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